Buhari advised to sustain amnesty programme

Immediate past Senior Special Assistant to former President Goodluck Ebelle Jonathan on Niger Delta Affairs and the Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty programme, Hon. Kingsley Kuku, has emphasised the need for the amnesty programme for Niger Delta agitators to be sustained by the All Progressives Congress, APC administration.
Explaining the landmarks of the presidential amnesty programme in Abuja, Kuku said that 30,000 ex-agitators have so far graduated from different disciplines and have been certificated, including the 67 licenced commercial pilots.
He said that others are currently undergoing one form of training or the other in different institutions in several countries including the United States and the United Kingdom.
These, he added, have made the Niger Delta area relatively peaceful compared to what it was during the pre-amnesty period.
Corroborating Kuku’s assertion, one of the beneficiaries of the programme, Mr. Tarila Nathan Dressman, who is currently a chemical technician with Impact Chemical Technologies, Texas, USA, said, if not for the amnesty programme, he would have been useless to himself and a nuisance to the country in spite of the fact that he had a Bachelors degree at the time he was in the creeks with the Niger Delta agitators.
According to him, through the amnesty programme, he has not only been able to obtain a Masters degree, but has also secured a befitting job with a petrochemical firm.
Mr. Dressman said that he plans to work out a way for the company he works with to set up a subsidiary in Nigeria for the benefit of the country as well as to create employment for other less privileged youths in the country.